Saturday, December 4, 2010

The Hit, and the Review

So two things happened this week with "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol:"

We just sold out every show for the rest of the run, and it runs till December 30.

--and--

We received several more reviews, including one from Misha at the Seattle Times.

As to point one: having a show sell out with four weeks left in its run is frankly amazing. On Wednesday night, Nikki over at Taproot sent me a note that they had 900+ tickets left for the run of the show. Thursday around noon, I got another note: there were less than 250 tickets left. By the time I went to the show Thursday night, they were completely sold out.

This is the textbook definition of a Hit.

As to the review: I'm grateful for Misha giving this show a full-length review in The Times. One of my concerns has been that since this is a Christmas show, we weren't going to get a thoughtful, full review of this show from a paper.

Theatre artists like to say that reviews are good for selling tickets, but that's it. I respectfully disagree. Good reviews can help you sell a play to other producers, so that your work can be performed with other companies across the country. They can reflect to your peers that you know what you're doing, and help build your local reputation. (If it's a bad review--let's not go there.)

And every once in a while, there's something that the reviewer says that can actually help you improve your show.

My rule with reviews is that I read them once, take a pull quote if it's useful, and then do my best to forget about them. Good or bad, reviews are one person's opinion, and if you start to believe your press, you're in trouble.

There are several things I disagreed with when I read it. But again, it IS one person's opinion--even though in this case, you have to respect that she's done this for years and makes a living at it. I often disagree with Misha, but there's no question that when it comes to theatre critics, she's the most influential in Seattle.

If you're interested in what she has to say, I say read it.

Then come see the show and see what you think.

(If you can get tickets. There may be additional performances added. Stay tuned.)

About Me

I'm a Seattle-based writer, playwright and director. For the last fifteen years I've worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily for Seattle Weekly, where I was the theatre critic from 1995-2000, and subsequently as a theatre columnist from 2006-2008, then worked at The 5th Avenue Theatre for two years as their PR Manager. I've recently turned to fiction writing and am currently working on my second novel.